In short
- Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Company has arrange a devoted cryptocurrency investigation unit to deal with cash laundering and terrorism financing carried out by means of digital belongings.
- The unit sits contained in the FIA’s new Nationwide Command and Management Centre and can probe the felony use of crypto, whereas the Pakistan Digital Belongings Regulatory Authority handles regulation.
- It marks the enforcement facet of a fast nationwide crypto push that has included lifting a banking ban, planning change licences and courting Trump-linked crypto ventures.
Pakistan’s prime federal investigators have arrange a devoted unit to police crypto-linked crime, constructing out the enforcement facet of a nationwide drive to embrace digital belongings.
The Federal Investigation Company (FIA) has established a cryptocurrency investigation unit in its newly operational Nationwide Command and Management Centre (NC3), concentrating on cash laundering and terrorism financing carried out by means of digital currencies, the company’s counter-terrorism chief mentioned.
FIA Counter-Terrorism Wing Director Dr Muhammad Athar Waheed advised native media outlet Daybreak the unit would examine the felony use of crypto, whereas the lately created Pakistan Digital Belongings Regulatory Authority (PVARA) stays the physique liable for regulating digital belongings. He urged two different companies—the Nationwide Cyber Crime Investigation Company and the Anti-Narcotics Power—to construct comparable models to counter crypto’s use in cybercrime and the drug commerce, and mentioned new guidelines had been being drafted to wrap up inquiries inside fastened timeframes.
The NC3 centre brings the FIA’s financial-crime instruments onto one platform, together with anti-money laundering and virtual-currency investigation desks, an Interpol coordination level, and models for open-source intelligence, cyber patrolling and darkish net investigation.
Pakistan and crypto
Pakistan, which ranked third within the Chainalysis 2025 International Crypto Adoption Index, has moved aggressively to formalize the sector. Islamabad has lifted an eight-year crypto banking ban, created PVARA, begun advancing licences for crypto exchanges and explored tokenizing state belongings.
It has additionally woven crypto into its diplomacy with Washington, placing a cope with an affiliate of World Liberty Monetary—the Trump household’s crypto enterprise—to discover utilizing its USD1 stablecoin for cross-border funds.
That embrace hit a snag in June, when the influential Jamia Darul Uloom Karachi seminary dominated that cryptocurrency is just not “wealth” below Islamic regulation and subsequently not a legitimate technique of cost—a fatwa that solid doubt on the federal government’s plans. PVARA chairman Bilal bin Saqib has since requested the seminary to differentiate between purely speculative tokens and asset-backed devices resembling absolutely reserved stablecoins and blockchain-recorded sukuk, telling Reuters that Pakistan might “lead the world in Shariah-compliant digital finance.”
For now, the FIA unit provides Islamabad an enforcement arm to match its regulatory ambitions—even because the query of whether or not crypto is permissible in any respect, within the eyes of the nation’s non secular students, stays unresolved.
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